Amazing gadgets we can now wield freely

Greetings!

It’s really amazing what kind of gadgets are available to us these days. From the ever-so-popular Raspberry PI down to the smaller Microcontrollers, choices are abound. With this in mind, today I’m going to talk about 4D Systems’ Graphic LCD kit.

The Gen4-uLCD-24PT Display is a 2.4″ display kit with Picasso graphic processor. This processor handles all the graphic processing for the display. Additionally, it handles data through Serial I2C and Parallel GPIO ports. As such, Engineers and Tinkerers can concentrate on their main applications or firmware without having to worry too much about the graphical end.

Graphic LCD Starter Kits

The starter kit contains the display modules and all necessary hardware kit. In addition, their 4DGL flagship code’s IDE, 4D Workshop, is free to download from their website.

uLCD-24PT Starter Kit

Starter Kit Box Content

Gen4 Graphic LCD Front side

Back side (Take notes of MicroSD Card)

Above the TQFP package Picasso graphic processor is the MicroSD which can contain supporting files for the program to run. To the left and right are the flat-flex connector going to the expansion board and LCD screen respectively.

Despite the high-quality connector accompanying the kit, I would suggest to minimize connection and disconnection cycle of the connector. Although the easy connect ZIF header might tempt you to do so, I strongly advise against it.

Overall, this starter kit from 4D systems presents an amazingly easy out-of-the-box experience for beginner and advanced users alike. Furthermore, the attractive price point allows you to experiment with the smaller screen, and then expand later when there’s demand for it.

As much as I would like to rant on and on about the awesomeness of this product, I shall put that into a different post with code example and running demonstration.